"A tom-cat, smooth-coated, purring rascal," said old Octavius when he
heard the news. "_Doctor_ Hardon, indeed; _doctor_, bah!" And many of
the townspeople of Somesham, though they did not use Octavius Hardon's
language, agreed with him in spirit, and sneered at the new doctor's
visit to Scotland, and the paragraph that by some means found its way
into the paper, congratulating the people on the acquisition to their
town of a physician. Of course the doctor himself did not know of its
existence until it was pointed out to him at one of the public meetings,
when he looked perfectly astonished, and declared that it was a matter
that he meant to have kept a profound secret from everybody. However,
as it was made so public, and in such a manner, of course he felt
himself bound to take steps to inform his friends and patients that the
fact of his being a physician should make no difference, that he looked
upon the degree merely in the light of an honour; and hoped for many
years to come to be the simple country apothecary, in whose humble skill
his fellow-townsmen would have confidence. Guinea-fees and
prescriptions had never been in his thoughts, the honour having been
completely thrust upon him, so he said, for he knew that he could
command a practice as a country apothecary while he would have starved
as a physician. For he had practised for many years in Somesham, while
he was greatly annoyed that his brother Octavius would reside there, as
the doctor told his lady, to quarrel with him and lower him in the eyes
of the people. Doctor Hardon had stood at many sick-beds in the
district; spoken smooth nothings respecting the various increases in
families which took place beneath his watchful eyes; when in every case,
whatever the sex, the child was sure to be the finest he had ever seen
in the whole course of his career as a medical practitioner. But the
doctor had also worn a great many pairs of black-kid gloves, and many a
long-flowing silk scarf upon those other occasions--at those
stopping-places of the journey of life; and ill-natured persons had been
known to declare that one of Mrs Hardon's dresses had been composed of
these long black-silk strips sewn together. But then people will be
ill-natured.
"Thomas Hardon, Esq, MD," sat at his breakfast-table in his
dressing-gown, but his black frock-coat lay upon a chair at his side,
ready brushed, and the rest of his costume was of the correct doctorial
black. He did not even allow himself to sit down in slippers, but wore
boots of the most lustrous black until bedtime. Of an imposing
presence, with fine grey hair, a good complexion, sufficiently stout, he
was the very acme of a quiet family doctor; and even if he was not so
skilful as he might have been, there was that in his quiet ease and
assumption which often gave confidence, and insured faith in trembling
patients--matters which had before now worked wonders when the doctor's
medicine alone would have failed. The world is much given to taking
people at their own value, and undoubtedly by those who merely looked at
the surface, a much higher price would have been set upon the doctor in
that imposing suit of black, and that stiffest of stiff white
neckcloths, than upon friend Matthew Space in his black shabbiness. But
then, of course, the doctor's double gold eyeglass, gold-chain, studs,
diamond ring, and the shape of his repeater seen through the soft black
kerseymere waistcoat, added weight in people's estimation, without
taking into consideration that air of profundity, and shake of the noble
grey head, which implied so much at so little expense of thought.
People at Somesham shook their heads with the doctor, and declared him
to be a man of worth; while other people there were who shook their
heads with his brother Octavius, and considered him a sham.
But people joined in speaking well of his wife--downright, blunt,
plain-spoken Mrs Hardon--who now sat, pale-faced and anxious, opposite
to her husband, supplying his wants, while she waited for an answer to
her last question, her hand slightly trembling as it held a letter the
doctor had lately passed to her.
"You will let me answer this, Tom, won't you?" she said gently, with all
the motherly woman in her tones, and the hard, business, doctor's wife,
who often made up his medicines, and even prescribed in simple cases in
his absence, gone. "You will let me answer this, Tom?"
The doctor kept his paper before his face, and read on without
condescending to reply.
"Tom," she repeated, leaning towards him, "Tom, be tender and gentle
now, Tom; and--"
Mrs Hardon stopped; for a maid had entered the room with a note, which
she handed to Mrs Hardon.
"Confound you!" hissed the doctor as soon as the door was closed; and
then, instead of the mild, beaming doctorial countenance, there was his
brother's angry face scowling on his wife--"Confound you! how many times
have I told you not to `Tom' me before the servants? No, no, no! if you
will have an answer," he shouted; "let her starve--let her die--let her
jump off one of the bridges if she likes; she left me, and she may
suffer for it. She sha'n't come back here to disgrace me in my
profession."
Mrs Hardon was not at all afraid of her husband, and in many of their
little matrimonial differences she had been known to come off the
better. The blood rose to her cheeks, and she was about to answer
angrily, but she checked herself, and, crossing over, laid her hand upon
her husband's shoulder.
"Tom!" she whispered.
"Damn! I tell you I won't have it!" roared the doctor.
"Hush!" said Mrs Hardon sternly, but with a touch of softness in her
voice. "You know I was ill, Tom, when I came back from town last week."
"Well?" said the doctor, shuffling impatiently in his seat.
"I did not tell you the reason, Tom."
"Well, what of that?" said the doctor savagely.
"O, Tom!" she said, her voice breaking as she sank at his feet, "I saw
her; I met her. She passed me as I was going to my cab, wild-eyed,
pale, worn-looking; and O, Tom, if you had seen her too--seen her as I
saw her then, when I held out my arms to her and she fled away
shamefaced before me--you would have felt, as I did, as I do now,
something tugging at your heartstrings, and whispering to you that it
was your child that you did not use well, and telling you that if you
had done your duty by her she would never have gone to Octavius, and
then fled with that base villain. Tom," she continued softly, "I feel
all this. We are getting old, Tom, and what are we to say at the last
hour, what forgiveness can we ask for, if our own child is driven from
us? She hurried from me then; but see now how it has made her write.
Look at the address here; where is it? some horrible part of--O, Tom!"
The exclamation was hardly shrieked from Mrs Hardon's lips before the
letter the doctor had snatched from her hand was blazing upon the fire,
he fiercely dragging off his dressing-gown, and preparing to put on his
black coat; while, the softness gone from her face, Mrs Hardon stood
before him frowning and hard; but far from noticing her husband's acts,
she was gazing introspectively, and trying to recall the address she had
so lately read; an address which the more she tried to bring back, the
more it seemed to glide from her mind; first a number, then a word, then
the whole, and it was gone.
The doctor pulled on his coat by snatches, ejaculated, and went through
many of the evolutions favoured by persons who wish to impress others
with the fact that they are in a tempestuous passion; but he had
resisted the advances made by his wife when she had thrown off the mask
that years of worldliness had fixed there, and now she was ready to
engage him with his own weapons. As to his real or simulated anger, she
valued it not in the least, holding it in the most profound contempt,
while a stranger would hardly have believed her to be the same woman who
a few minutes before had kneeled at the doctor's feet.
"I want some money before you go out," said Mrs Hardon coldly; and the
doctor started with surprise at the change the conversation had taken.
"I want some money," said Mrs Hardon in a louder key.
"How much?" said the doctor, calming down as his wife seemed disposed to
take the upper hand.
"Twenty-five--thirty pounds," said Mrs Hardon.
"What for?" said the doctor.
"What for?" said Mrs Hardon fiercely. "Not to send away--not for
_that_, but for the tradespeople's bills; since you are so proud of your
reputation--your professional reputation--have them cleared off.
Richards has sent twice, and threatens proceedings;" and she held out
the note the maid had brought in; "and now I insist upon knowing how you
stand. I will not be kept here in the dark over these speculations. I
know matters are going wrong; and do you suppose that I will sit by like
a child and see ruin come upon my home; I who was always trusted to keep
your books and purse, until you became a physician? There is something
wrong, Thomas Hardon, or there would not always be this pinching and
holding back of every sovereign. You drive me from your side--me, the
wife of five-and-thirty years--when I would be the loving woman. Now,
then, I will be the firm woman of the world, and be satisfied upon these
points at issue. You had better write me a cheque at once; for I will
not be disgraced by the tradespeople, since we are to stand so upon our
dignity."
Doctor Hardon looked viciously at his wife, spoiling his generally
placid countenance to a degree that, had one of his best patients seen
him then, it would have been a serious loss to the doctor and a gain to
the rival practitioner; but he made no movement towards drawing the
cheque for which Mrs Hardon stood waiting, till, seeing that nothing
was to be gained, she left the room in anger; but the next minute she
had returned, to once more lay her hand gently upon the doctor's arm:
"Have you a heart, Tom?" she whispered. "Is our old age to be an old
age of regret? Think of Octavius and his son; look at his desolate,
wretched life, and don't let ours be quite the same."
Mrs Hardon had had a hard battle with self, and crushed down the angry
feelings that had been fighting for exit; for there was the thought of
her child in her heart--maternity asserting itself and thrusting aside
in its greatness all that was petty and contemptible; but as she stood
there appealing to the doctor the struggle grew harder. Obstinate,
bitter, cruel, the doctor masked all beneath his cold, calm,
professional aspect, treating the weeping woman with a cutting
indifference that roused her indignation thoroughly at last; and to
conceal her anger she hurried from the room, but this time not to
return.
The doctor may have had a heart, but it was thoroughly unmoved by all
that his wife had said; in fact the appeal had come at a wrong time,
since the same post which brought the letter he had passed over to Mrs
Hardon had given him other letters whose contents he so thoroughly knew
that he had not even opened them, but, glancing at their directions,
thrust them hastily into his pocket, where they acted as so much fuel to
feed the fire of his wrath. There was something so unmistakable in the
particularly-distinct handwriting upon the envelopes--something so very
blue about the paper--that, expecting unpleasant communications, the
doctor detected them at a glance, and mentally he went over the
contents.
The fact was the doctor was short of cash, and that through more than
one unfortunate speculation in which he had embarked. Like a great many
more men of moderate income, he had been bitten with the desire to
increase it, though the bite came in the first instance from his wife,
who scolded him fiercely when, after the MD honour had been thrust upon
him, he gave up the union practice, which entailed the loss of the
regular salary of one hundred pounds per annum. The doctor said that it
was not becoming for a physician to be the medical attendant of the
parish; and Mrs Hardon, who was then in a worldly, everyday phase,
declared that it was "all fiddlesticks' ends," when there was his cheque
regularly at certain times, while the greater part of the work could be
done by the assistant, who would do very well for the poor people. It
was a sin and a shame, she declared, though how connected with
fiddlesticks' ends was best known to herself. There was, however,
something relating to the musical science in the matter, for Mrs Doctor
Hardon kept harping upon the same string until the doctor snapped it by
furiously threatening her if another word was said about it--threats
which Mrs Hardon noticed so much that she certainly held her tongue;
and she held her hand too, and tried to annoy the doctor by keeping a
bad table, which she said so great a loss every year necessitated. Poor
woman! she little knew that the time would come when such economy would
be forced upon her. What, she asked the doctor, was honour without
money? What was the use of her being a physician's wife if they had
nothing to support it with? And, then, too for him to be such an ass--
the doctor started and puffed out his cheeks at this--"Yes, ass," said
Mrs Hardon, "as to play into your adversary's hand like that, when he
was on the verge of ruin, as everybody said, and could not have kept on
another six months; for you to throw the union practice and a hundred
a-year into his lap, and supply him with the material for carrying on
the war!"
Mrs Doctor Hardon spoke of the rival practitioner, a poor, gentlemanly
man, who had set up some years before in the dusty town of Somesham, and
had been fighting ever since with difficulties; for, as in all small
country towns in this land of liberty, every new-comer was looked upon
as an intruder--a foreigner--and one who will probably interfere with
the fine old conservative notions of the place. They don't want him,
and they won't have him if they can help it. He is clever, perhaps; but
they don't want clever people, and they would prefer being half-killed
by the old practitioner to being cured by the new. Trade or profession,
it is just the same; and perhaps the acts of the town are only the acts
of the country in miniature. Hospitality we have in plenty, and our
share of the virtues, no doubt; but truly we English have most strongly
in us the propensity for turning our backs upon those who are trying to
fight their way on, until they can manage to do without help, when we
turn round, smiling with the features that frowned before, pat the
successful man upon the back, and say, "Well done!"
Mr Brande, "the new man," as he was called, had found all this, and had
been ready to despair again and again through the many years he had been
trying to make a practice; but now the turning-point had come in the
honours of Thomas Hardon, Esq, MD; not that he had reaped much present
advantage, and it was doubtful if he would have had the practice at all
if Doctor Hardon had not had immediate want for a hundred and fifty
pounds, and, trusting to Mr Brande's honour as a gentleman, offered to
throw up the parish work on condition of receiving that sum, which Mr
Brande gave him in bills, and, what was more, screwed, economised, and
met them as they fell due. But Mrs Doctor Hardon did not know this,
nor yet the extent of the liabilities her lord had incurred; while the
deeper he sunk in that black, clinging mire of debt, the more reticent
he grew.
Volume One, Chapter VIII.